


Steel and Scarlet

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [79]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff, For the most part, Sexual Content, briefly, for bucky and wanda, for the twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 11:58:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7049695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You think I am going to threaten you,” he says. He sounds, Bucky thinks, almost amused by the idea. “I do not think there is a point. You know what I will do to you if Wanda is hurt.”</p><p>“What I did to the guy who shot her?” Bucky asks.</p><p>Pietro shrugs. “Or worse.”</p><p>Bucky does not find Pietro scary. He is no taller or stronger than him or Steve, only faster, and his cocky tendencies make it hard to always take him seriously.</p><p>All the same there is a terrifying certainty to Pietro, whenever it comes to Wanda, and Bucky is pretty sure his knowledge of that shows. Pietro smiles, just slightly at him.</p><p>“If it is a comfort,” he says, “I do not think you would hurt her.”</p><p>--</p><p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6548554"><i>Asset</i></a> and <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6548404"><i>Violent Promises</i></a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steel and Scarlet

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Asset](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6548554) by [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts). 
  * Inspired by [Violent Promises](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6548404) by [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts). 



**i.** **  
** Sometimes, Bucky dreams.

It's not that they’re  _ bad _ dreams, really, but they’re certainly not dreams he wants dancing across his mind when he’s with Wanda. He's not gonna start  _ avoiding _ her, like some kid with his first crush, he’s better’n that, but it’s kinda awkward, knowing the girl you fancy can see into your skull.

“I cannot see everything,” she says one day, catching him worrying. “I see the presence of a mind and surface movement, surface thoughts. I have to focus to see more. The only mind I am always in is Pietro’s, and he in mine.”

That, Bucky supposes, is half a relief. Now he just has to make sure Pietro doesn’t notice.

 

* * *

 

**ii.** **  
** He notices. Of course.

“You think I am going to threaten you,” he says. He sounds, Bucky thinks, almost amused by the idea. “I do not think there is a point. You know what I will do to you if Wanda is hurt.”

“What I did to the guy who shot her?” Bucky asks.

Pietro shrugs. “Or worse.”

Bucky does not find Pietro scary. He is no taller or stronger than him or Steve, only faster, and his cocky tendencies make it hard to always take him seriously.

All the same there is a terrifying certainty to Pietro, whenever it comes to Wanda, and Bucky is pretty sure his knowledge of that shows. Pietro smiles, just slightly at him.

“If it is a comfort,” he says, “I do not think you would hurt her.”

Surprisingly enough it  _ is _ . After all, Bucky knows, Pietro is Wanda's staunchest protector. That Pietro assesses threats to Wanda just as Bucky does threats to Steve, as Natasha does to Clint. To know Pietro doesn’t think he's likely to hurt Wanda is, in its way, a comfort.

Bucky lets out a breath, rocks back on his heels, lets go of the railing in front of him. “It is a comfort,” he says. “Thanks.”

 

* * *

 

**iii.** **  
** “Would you like to go out?”

Bucky's question startles Wanda and not least because he's sounding oddly formal. “Go out?”

Bucky looks unaccountably nervous to Wanda, and she fully twigs as to why when he says, “For coffee?”

Wanda smiles, wide and happy. “I would like that.”

 

* * *

 

**iv.**   
Wanda knows she does not  _ really  _ have to negotiate with Pietro to get him to leave her alone; all she ever has to do is  _ ask _ , after all, but she knows how Pietro worries, knows that, of all people, Bucky is one that they ought at least to consider potentially dangerous. So, negotiation it is.

“Vision,” she suggests. “You could play games with him. You know he picks up controllers and combo sequences faster than anyone else. You could make a competition of it, keep your mind from worrying.”

Pietro’s smile is teasing. “You know he searches them out online with his internet powers.”

“Please?” Wanda asks. “I would like to go out with James, and without you trailing along. You know he will not hurt either of us.”

Pietro laughs, tugs her to him, presses a kiss to her hair. “I know. I will beat Vision at video games. You have fun with Barnes.”

 

* * *

 

**iv.**   
The place they go to is not one of the big Starbucks Wanda has seen everywhere; instead it is a small nameless café, tucked around the corner of a block. Wanda can just about make out the memory of Steve recommending it to Bucky that floats through his mind, a memory of visiting it with Steve and Bruce at some point, the sense of  _ cosy _ and  _ safe _ and  _ comfort _ .

She knows that those are not thoughts Bucky applies to many places.

 

* * *

 

**v.**   
It’s odd, being someplace without Pietro at her side, or within her mind’s reach. She knows it’s odd for him, in turn – uncomfortable, really, given his dedication to her safety – but knows Pietro has accepted it, for this occasion, that while he will be worrying about her in some areas of his mind the rest of him will be quite contented playing whatever game he and Vision decide to call up.

It doesn’t make it any less odd to find a table with only two seats instead of three once they have ordered their drinks (coffee for Bucky, requested to be “as thick and foul as tar” which Wanda knows translates to the three-days-in-the-urn version with condensed milk that he and Steve so prefer and frustrate Tony with every other weekday, and a simple hot chocolate for Wanda), nor any less odd to have only their orders to make, and not have to wait for Pietro’s hundred-mile-an-hour order of Frankencoffee that makes even Clint flinch to hear.

Still, the seats are comfortable, and Bucky is… almost endearingly nervous in how he turns his hands over and over rather than drinking his thick-as-tar coffee. Wanda curls in her seat, contented as a cat, and spoons out a half-melted marshmallow for consideration.

Bucky hasn’t said anything yet, and so, while her eyes watch the melting mess of the marshmallow, her mind watches his, protocols layered over old streets  and alleys and trenches, protocols given to him by others and protocols he made himself, knowingly and not, to guard the Captain. 

Wanda knows minds like this. They are why she feels safe with Bucky.

 

* * *

 

**vi.**   
Bucky has been thinking in silence for several long minutes, wondering what to say when he realises Wanda is smiling at him from over the top of her mug.

“Sometimes,” she says, “It is nice to sit in silence. You do not have to say anything at all.”

It’s easy to smile at that, to finally sip at his coffee - still hot as hell, still thick as tar - and shrug. “Sometimes it’s hard to know how to start.”

“Pietro always says to start at the beginning,” Wanda suggests. “Vision too, and Natasha, and Hill and Sharon and Clint. Start there.”

Bucky doesn’t know exactly how to say that there isn’t an easy start to the myriad things he wants to say, that some things don’t have clear-cut beginnings. In the end he sighs. “Start later?” he asks. “Tell me how you got Pietro not to follow us instead?”

Wanda laughs. Something in Bucky’s chest squeezes at the sound. “It was easy,” Wanda says, “once you know how Pietro thinks.”

 

* * *

 

**vii.**   
The coffee-dates become a regular thing - and begin to be called that by everyone after the fifth one when Pietro had sprinted in halfway through babbling about a cache of energy weapons that had been uncovered in an old S.S.R. office. The second half of that coffee-date had involved frantically running around the city trying to collect them all up before the remnants of HYDRA or some other group got ahold of them, Wanda and Bucky the only two out of uniform.

“We did it though,” Bucky pointed out as they made their way (hand in hand) back to the café. “And I don’t see your brother fretting.”

“He always frets,” Wanda says. “We are all the family we have left.”

Bucky lifts their joined hands - his metal and her flesh, fingers intertwined - “Is he fretting about this?”

Wanda smiles, eyes dancing. “Not right now.”

 

* * *

 

**viii.**   
Pietro, keeping a distant eye on Wanda when he is able, is barely fretting at all. He’s worried - he always is - for Wanda’s safety, but not because of Barnes. Barnes, they both know, is trustworthy. That Wanda can break any triggered conditioning in his head, that he will protect them just as they will protect him and the Captain, their violent promise. 

He does not like being so far from Wanda so often, not having her mind to check his against, to keep his thoughts from speeding from winds to a whirlpool, but when she returns - and she always does - their minds link up again, timelines realign, memories are passed between them so they are in balance, so they each understand. 

Pietro understands. Wanda feels safe and happy with Barnes.

 

* * *

 

**ix.**   
Sometimes, instead of the café, they go to a museum or a cinema or an art gallery. They’re all interesting in their own ways, and Wanda takes to buying postcards from the museums and galleries, giving them to Pietro or pinning them on her wall.

(There’s a postcard of the Rosetta Stone above her desk, and a print of one of her favourite paintings from the Museum of Modern Art. Pietro’s room has a postcard of a perfectly preserved leather shoe -  _ imagine running in those _ \- one of ancient Greek athletes -  _ you’d have beaten them all _ \- and, bizarrely, an Iron Man helmet shaped stress ball -  _ so you can take your anger out on Stark _ . They accumulate gradually, but before long they each have whole walls of images.)

“So he doesn’t feel left out?” Bucky asks, when Wanda first starts the habit, and Wanda shrugs a shoulder.

“He used to steal things for me,” she says, lifting one of her necklaces. “This one, and the round one with the carnelian. Some of my rings and bracelets. Birthday presents. We try to get things for each other.”

Bucky remembers saving up to get pastels for Steve to draw with, or a new notebook, and understands.

 

* * *

 

**x.**   
They don’t kiss for the longest time, but when they do it’s gentle and calm and unhurried. Wanda’s lips are gentle on Bucky’s, sliding slightly with the lip balm she uses to deal with how they chap after she’s bitten her lip ragged when nervous. Bucky’s hands are tentative at her waist, cautious and waiting.

When they pull apart Wanda laughs gently against his lips. “I am not made of glass, James.”

The next kiss is warmer, fiercer, and when they return back, hand-in-hand, both their lips are red from kissing.

 

* * *

 

**xi.**   
When they eventually fall into bed Wanda rides  _ him _ . Her hips pushing him into the mattress with more force than he thought possible from her small frame, her legs at his sides, where his fingers – flesh and metal both – can trace their way over her skin, tease out more pleasure for her. She rides him, scarlet spiralling like smoke from her fingertips, her head tilted back, her expression one of the most bewitching things he’s ever seen.

Later, when they are curled with Wanda’s head light against his chest, her hair trailing over the metal joints of his metal arm the thought comes back to his mind. In his arms Wanda laughs.

“Bewitching?” she asks, tilting her head up to look at him, smiling, her eyes bright with laughter. “I  _ am _ a witch, James.”

_ And a witch belongs to no one but herself _ . The words echo through Bucky’s mind as he presses a gentle kiss to her lips.

 

* * *

 

**xii.**   
When Bucky wakes in the morning Wanda is still curled beside him, head resting on her arm and his shoulder (the metal-and-flesh one, not the plain-human one). Her hair is still splayed out over his arm and the pillow, and she’d look almost peaceful except for the smallest of frowns.

“It’s… odd,” she says when she wakes and sees Bucky’s puzzlement. “To wake without Pietro’s mind there. But I wanted privacy and he did not want to see, so-”

“So you weren’t in each other’s heads?” Bucky says, handing her a mug of tea.

Wanda nods, sips her tea. Her eyes are far away as she murmurs, “I hope he did not have a nightmare.”

 

* * *

 

**xiii.**   
It’s never really occurred to Bucky that the twins would have nightmares even now. He knows they have trouble sleeping and that they’re often up to keep him company when he’s restless, but he’d just assumed it was Wanda seeing minds or Pietro’s speed messing with them both.

The idea of Pietro - irrepressible and as much of a shit as Steve and he once were - suffering nightmares is bizarre to him.

 

* * *

 

**xiv.**   
When they arrive in the common area Pietro is up and embracing Wanda in a split of silver. Wanda’s hand slips from Bucky’s as her arms wrap around her brother, their voices low, the language not English. Bucky goes to sit by Steve and leaves the twins to talking.

 

* * *

 

**xv.**   
“I would not have left you alone if I knew you would have a nightmare,” are Wanda’s first words to Pietro, her hands sure and certain where they press against his shoulderblades.

Pietro’s head shakes, words quick, “I did not want to disturb you.”

Wanda’s fingers are gentle over his brow, tracing the frown lines there. “Tell me,” she murmurs, tilting her head to his shoulder. As her hands drop from her brother’s brow, his head drops to hers in turn. “If you have a nightmare you can tell me,” she says. “Always.”

“Maybe,” Pietro says, and she can feel the smile in his voice. “I do not think I want to disturb what you and Barnes were up to, though.”

Wanda laughs, lightly slaps her brother’s arm. “You can call him James,” she says. “Or Bucky. You used to.”

 

* * *

 

**xvi.**   
“You don’t mind them-” Tony starts when Bucky joins them, gesturing with his coffee cup towards where Wanda and Pietro are huddled close and talking. Bucky blinks up from his plate.

“Is there a reason to?”

Tony seems, for once, to be mostly speechless at that. “They’re…” he starts. “But-”

“They’re twins,” Bucky says. “They’re all they have left of family in the world. I’m not gonna get between that.” He smiles, drinks some of his coffee. “Besides,” he says, still smiling. “Wanda’s a witch. Witches belong to no one but themselves.” 

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are much appreciated!


End file.
